 If you're like me, you might have a very big problem. Have you made so many of the same videos that you can do them in your sleep? Is there a formula of shots that you always use because it just always gets the job done? Do you see the problem? Because we become so efficient at what we do, I found my creativity slowly rotting like an apple on a hot summer day. So today, we're going to be jolting some life back into our creativity by taking on a challenge. All right, so we're here in the studio space. We got the very talented model Neville over here who will be in frame. Got my very good buddy Thomas who will be doing behind the scenes. All they really know is that we're shooting some sort of commercial for decaffeinated coffee. They don't really know what's going on. Is that right? All right, well, it's time to fill them in. On each of these cards is a random camera angle, camera movement, shot technique. We are each going to pick a few so that it adds up to 10. And we're going to use those 10 random shots to shoot a commercial. And we're going to make something sick out of it. I knew you were up to something. After picking out the cards, I immediately knew what to shoot. And it was myself in the foot thinking that I could do all this in two hours. Luckily, I thought of a simple storyline while driving to the studio. So I tried assigning a purpose to each random shot to serve that storyline. And then came one of the most important steps, which was organizing the 10 shots into edit order. But wait, I thought we had limited time. Why are we editing before we shoot? In terms of order of shooting things. Well, if you don't know how your final video should play out, you're basically tossing a bunch of jigsaw puzzle pieces to your editor without telling them what the final picture should be. Please don't do that to me. And it'll also help make sure that the shots have a reason to be there and tell a cohesive story at the end. Let's do it. Now, I wanted to shoot in chronological order as much as I could because I find myself being super tunnel vision when I'm under time pressure. First up was the close-up shot. It seemed like a great shot to ease into the challenge, but boy was I wrong because pouring scalding hot coffee was a safety hazard I should have expected. Getting the shot in focus was tough, getting the shot stable was tough, and remember what I said about being tunnel-visioned? Now it can be pretty tempting to start a video with a wide shot to establish the scene, but I find starting close-up creates the sense of mystery before revealing where we actually are. Next up was the tracking shot. Random thought, if you're pouring coffee into the mug and then taking the mug somewhere and sort of like tracking the mug. I love it. Which is an amazing way to bring our character from one location to another by having the camera track their movement. Man, I'm really happy that autofocus is the thing because getting a stable shot is tricky enough when I'm walking like a crab and holding what feels like a dumbbell at the gym. A camera pullout is when the camera smoothly moves further away from your subject. I don't know why, but I just visualized so the tracking shot would go from the mug and then somehow zooms out to reveal sitting in the chair. It's a great way to establish the relationship between your subject and the location. Oh, that's a nice shot. Yeah, that's good. That was a good moment. In this case, it's our first time revealing more of the cozy space, which is why I felt it was important to me to spend more time nailing the shot. Big mistake when you're taking on a challenge though because I had to surrender perfection if I wanted to get through all of 10 shots. I cannot wait for the snap zoom. This snaps. So what is a snap zoom, guys? The lens zooms faster than the time flying in this challenge and hyper-focuses on your subject when zooming in or quickly reveals the location when zooming out. Now, my lens can't zoom in very far, so here's a neat little trick to give more work to your editor. Seriously? Have shot one end by zooming in and have shot two start by zooming in. When you glue the shots together in the edit, it looks like one single super stylized shot. Next up is the medium close-up, one of the most boring shots to shoot in my opinion. Medium close-up, could just be of Neville. Tricky coffee. Now, don't get me wrong, it is the best way to show your subject's facial expression while showing a bit of the space behind them. It's comfy, safe, and neutral, unlike anything in today's challenge. So I decided to add a bit of camera movement just to spice things up a bit. Most of our 10 shots have some sort of movement, whether it's the subject moving or the camera. So it kind of ruins the flow of your video when you have a shot with almost no movement slapped in the middle. It's like a race car crashing against a brick wall. So instead of watching that disaster unfold, let's just watch the rest of this challenge instead. The rack focus is one of the most straightforward ways to shift your viewer's attention by pulling focus to a different distance. So we got rack focus, I mean that could be rack focusing from Neville over to the beans to reveal as an ending shot. Like that's just something immediately that comes to mind. I'm so glad my model Neville didn't throw up because of how many spins I was asking him to do in the background. The spinning and dancing will make sense later. Next in our random shots was the POV shot. And I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote this down because they're usually shot with setups like this. But all I had was this. POVs are a great way to really feel like we're in the shoes of the character, but it's a very stylized technique that had no place in this commercial. I am so glad that creativity is a collaborative effort because Thomas made a suggestion that saved me from an incomplete video. POV, action of grabbing, anytime you're grabbing something, you're grabbing the beans, you're pouring the coffee, you're grabbing the guitar. I do like the idea of grabbing the guitar as just some sort of variance. So we're a little bit off the coffee beans. We're gonna put music over me playing the guitar, right? We're just gonna put like an instrumental, like just some... So to get Neville's point of view, I had to get a little bit cozy with him while he risked a visit to a chiropractor. Now the whip pan isn't a shot itself, but it's a great technique for you to quickly transition from one scene to another. Since this is also a stylized technique, I figured that I'd make this stylized sandwich by squeezing it in between our POV shot and our next one of Neville dancing. All you gotta do is quickly pan one way at the end of the first shot and then start the next shot where they pan in the same direction. In the edit, we glue the shots together with that panning motion to create a seamless transition. This brings us to the slow shutter shot, which is a technique that's grown so popular recently that I hope the trend doesn't die out horribly like fidget spinners. All you do is pull your shutter speed to something pretty low, like 1 over 10, add some dramatic movement, like dancing, and you've got two guys doing an interpretive dance number. The amount of motion blur you get from a slow shutter gives you a surreal feeling that you can use for showing something like passage of time or a dream sequence. In this case, I wanted to express how Neville's in a euphoric state as he's jamming out in his loft. I will have to trust that that was okay. We really don't have a lot of time. I think we have like five minutes for our last shot. So let's do that. Now I saved the best shot for last because it's one of the most underrated techniques, the static shot. Now static shots can be pretty tricky to shoot, especially when the rest of your shots are pretty dynamic. Just like when we shot the medium close-up, we don't want to disrupt the flow of the video. In this case, I left my hands off the camera and on the ground picking up coffee beans because in order to make up for the lack of camera movement, Thomas helped me toss up a bunch of beans into the air. Okay, it was mostly Thomas and Neville picking up after my creative decision, so thank you guys. The lack of camera movement brings attention to what moves in the frame. So I was hoping that the flying coffee beans would express the punch of bold flavors when Neville sips his coffee. Unfortunately, the only punch I got was till my gut when I heard this dreaded sound. It was not that bad. Oh, that's a timer, guys. How do you guys feel about it? I mean, I feel good. I was mottling. This pressure was on you. It really was, huh? Let's go to the edit suite and find out how things go. So now that we've got the stressful part out of the way, we're going to get into the edit, which I guess isn't that much less stressful now that I think about it. But with all tricky edits, I like to start things off with finding music, so we've got Artlist opened in front of us. Let's go for something a little bit funky. I like electronic music usually. I like the sound of this song, so I'm just going to hit the download button. It looks like I've downloaded it before, but, you know, it's just that good of a track. And because I have Artlist Max, I have access to footage, plugins, apps, and templates. So let's take a look at some templates to see if I can spice up my visuals. I like the look of this one. Okay, okay. I'm probably going to use a few transitions from here, so let's download it and put it in. So right now we're looking at my favorite thing in empty timeline, and we're going to do what most clients think video editors do, which is just snap your fingers and have an entire video already edited. If only it was that simple. But I think we're ready to play it back and watch how the video turned out with 10 random shots. Let's go. There you have it, guys. Let us know in the comments if the video turned out the way you thought it would. Taking on these challenges have taught me how emotionally attached we can be to the shots that we choose. So flipping a routine on its head once in a while is a great creative exercise that allows us to think out of the box. If you enjoyed watching this challenge, check out our previous one where I took a random music genre and meshed it with a random video theme to make an abomination, a masterpiece. Otherwise, subscribe to the Artless Channel so that you don't miss the next video. We've got tutorials behind the scenes and videos more ridiculous than this one. Thank you all for watching, and I'll catch you in the next one.